The November 2008 incidents in Mumbai, India, confirmed that the essence of terrorist acts is of a political, rather than a religious nature, although the doctrine, organisation or justification of that act may be based on the beliefs and teachings of a religion.
What is revealed, once again, is the superior technical standard of the action, the strategy pursued by perpetrators, and their quasi-military outfits. The scope of the attack (in terms of the number of fighters, targets, and number of victims) is a disquieting herald of the future operation of terror groups: the emergence and, possibly, the spread of urban guerrilla.
The assumption that older or newer Islamist organisations were behind the slaughter, as made shortly after the attacks took place, does not reduce interest in an analysis aimed at identifying the organiser, financer and covert sponsor of this political action – because it is not aimed at settling a contention by means of terror; instead, it expresses the direct intention to create an environment of instability, insecurity and panic, entailing huge losses for the state, in terms of its international status, of its trade, tourism and foreign contacts, ending in isolation and decline.
As we list the causes of conflicts—including religious differences and disputes, territorial claims, identity clashes, access to and control over natural resources—light is shed on a new dimension of conflicts in a globalising world: competition and the elimination of economic rivals. It is the same serious significance that we also find in the revival of sea piracy, in the same geographic area, in the recent hijacking of a large oil tanker by Islamist Somali pirates.
